Sunday, May 8, 2011

New proof - Caffeine Is a Healthful Antioxidant in Coffee

Scientists are reporting an in-depth analysis of how the caffeine in coffee, tea, and other foods appears to defend against conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and heart disease on the most basic levels.
The report, which describes the chemistry behind caffeine's antioxidant belongings, appears in ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

Annia Galano and Jorge Rafael León-Carmona describe evidence suggestive of that coffee is one of the richest sources of healthful antioxidants in the average person's diet. Some of the latest investigate points to caffeine (also present in tea, cocoa, and other foods) as the source of powerful antioxidant effects that may help defend people from Alzheimer's and other diseases. However, scientists know little about exactly how caffeine works in scavenging the so-called free radicals that have damaging effects in the body. And those few studies sometimes have reached contradictory conclusions.

In an effort to bolster scientific knowledge about caffeine, they present detailed theoretical calculations on caffeine's interactions with free radicals. Their theoretical conclusions show "excellent" consistency with the results that other scientists have report from animal and other experiments, bolstering the likelihood that caffeine is, indeed, a source of healthful antioxidant activity in coffee.